In recent years, I have become
increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now
threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations,
Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American
commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment
and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic
commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating
dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal
responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders
have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations
and have disavowed long-standing global agreements - including agreements on
nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of
justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing
peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we
have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to
attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other
purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them
as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve
disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are
determined efforts by top US leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the
world.

These revolutionary policies have been
orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and
influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops
involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist
attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!"
has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual
interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that,
unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now
concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly
to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any
sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public
awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the
great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal
privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the US has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused
the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and GuantanamoBay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere
with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see
the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to
perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on
people in US custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear
weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and
that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or
derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last
50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned
the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear
nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in
space.

Protection of the environment has fallen
by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from
the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have
brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal
condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal
responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families.
Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since
freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized
nations).

I am extremely concerned by a
fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and
state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought
unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the
unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be
the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to
international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We
should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.

It is time for the deep and disturbing
political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with
Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic
political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of
the United
States. His newest book is Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis,
published this month by Simon & Schuster.